Notes on Yasujirô Ozu's I Was Born But (1932)

Contrary to most critics' view that the ending of Yasujirô Ozu's I Was Born But is downbeat, I find it delicately up-beat. The two precocious brothers not so much lose their innocence but rather gain in maturity and compassion. They are too young to see that their father’s silliness is a much lesser crime than the philandering of the boss, which while it is played for laughs, is there for the adults to see.

The kid brother played by 8yo Tomio Aoki  has to be one of the greatest childhood performances ever. Those mean poses, the cheekiness, the raspberries, and the mimicking of the older brother are glorious. A fantastic example of the uplifting joy of cinema both in its wistful nostalgia and human pathos. Great performances, a wry script, and a beguiling rhythm have you hooked.

The Ozu static shots and interludes with a low camera (and the flagrant disregard of Hollywood's rule) are there, but the editing and ensemble scenes also have a cheeky eloquence, like the camera panning before the character providing the perspective is shown, tracking shots with the camera like a little kid trying to keep up with the antics of the older kids, and the same tracking camera stopped by an obstacle such as a lamp-post . The shots of trams crossing the frame insinuate the elemental pathos we are witnessing.

Ozu: The pathos of things

Ozu's Tokyo Story

I made an interesting cinematic connection when reading a piece in the UK Guardian yesterday. The article, an edited extract by Oliver Burkemen from his book 'The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking', was titled 'Failure can be Inspiring: be positive, stay focused on success, we tell ourselves'. But the true path to contentment may lie in learning to be a 'loser'. Burkeman adopts the Stoic view of life: the ideal state of mind is tranquility – “not the excitable cheer of success”. In introducing his thesis Burkeman relates that there is a Japanese expression, mono no aware, that roughly translates as ‘the pathos of things’ and captures, in Burkeman’s words, a “kind of bitter-sweet melancholy at life’s impermanence – that additional beauty imparted to cherry blossoms, say, or human features, as a result of their inevitably fleeting time on Earth”. Yasujiro Uzo immediately came to mind, and that expression seems the essence of his cinema. Uzo’s pathos also imbues the prosaic with this bitter-sweetness: clothing drying on the line in a back-yard, idle smoke-stacks against a clear sky, or the simple joys of a bus-ride.

Woman of the Lake (Onna no mizûmi - Japan 1966)

Yoshishige Yoshida’s Woman of the Lake starring Yoshida’s ravishing wife and muse Mariko Okada is concerned with an ‘errant’ married women who has an affair. When nude photos of her taken by her lover are stolen she is forced to confront her bondage to men. The film is a radical critique of the subjugation of women as possessions and sexual objects. As is typical for Yoshida, his narrative though linear is fractured and sometimes obscure. There is a resolution of sorts but the ending is not final – the closing scene fades to black as a train enters a railway tunnel.

Yoshido has made a great film. He only gives glimpses of the photos and is more concerned with what they mean and as the catalyst to the scenario. Once they are stolen they become motifs representative not of their subject, but of a woman’s rights, and the battle she must engage in to recover her body from those that would oppress her. But it is more complex than this, as Yoshido does not use words but images to relay inner states, and as in life, not all is as it appears, nor is everything explained. The final 30 minutes are redolent of all sorts of things that are quite shattering. Near the end the husband is waiting for the unfaithful wife to have it out with her – and he falls asleep! The shots of Okada moving through the carriages to the end of a moving train are immensely powerful and elevate the act of walking to poetry.

The picture is amazingly modern: an expressionist tour-de-force with the b&w photography employed in wide-screen staging and dynamic use of deep focus to exquisite effect. It looks so contemporary – Okada sports oversized sunglasses currently back in vogue; and European – with Okada wearing flowing dresses and her luxuriant dark hair offest by elegant scarves.  To my mind Yoshido challenges Antonioni as the central motif of 60s cinema. Amazingly very little has been written about the film.

Suzaki Paradise (Akashingo - Japan 1956)

Yuzo Kawashima's Suzaki Paradise is an excellent film bordering on greatness. Actress Yukiko Todoroki’s Osami is the moral anchor for the lives that intersect at her tiny bar, and her performance is affecting, but it is Michiyo Aratama as the shiftless Tsutae that is truly compelling in a nuanced and deeply convincing portrayal as the drifter whore burdened by a decency she seeks to escape but always returns to. Her love for a loser is at bottom and all at once a glorious redemption and a prison. She is the new wave – a lost soul of the burgeoning metropolis – a beat. Kawashima uses brothel jazz on the soundtrack to insinuate this, and places his camera at ground level to look up at his protagonists in a disturbing new way. Aratama has the best line in the film: “You have to live until you die.”

Reflections on Ozu's Tokyo Story

For Fumiko, Noriko, and Kyoko A loving daughter's gaze Another day lost in time forever gone and ever-present The departing train leaves a dissolving black cloud Both gone The mother and the sister she never had On forged rails of steel that offer no return the other daughter gifted by fate holds the mother's watch In anguished reminiscence the time-piece ticks away in eternity as she smiles the smile of loss and regret Why did she leave us? Three women in boundless love blossomed in cruel obscurity and exquisite meaninglessness The mother is gone forever and the daughters lost to each other in Time's imperative The towers of industry billow their smoke to the boundless indifferent sky while the agony and the ecstasy of aloneness and sweet regret fade into the abyss of the past The ships ply the harbour their engines rhythmically echoing the aching heartbeat of a lonely old man